A Cup of Joe and a Slice of Pie
by Saturn Girl
Summary: This is a missing scene from the Breaking Bad season 5 episode "Buyout." It also contains a veiled reference to events from the Better Call Saul season 1 episode "Five-O."
1. Chapter 1

Jesse wiped the wetness from his eyes on the back of his sleeve and huffed, trying to keep his runny nose in check, his toes tapping crazy rhythms against the floor mat of his Tercel. He picked at the frayed seam of his jeans, forcing himself to look downward.

He wasn't going to look at the slinger on the corner, holed up under the streetlamp. Nope. He wasn't going to leave his car or give that dude any money for a teenth. He could have pocketed some free blue any time he wanted, but he was totally over it now.

Never again.

He had promised himself, never again!

_"He was just a kid. An innocent kid! Mr. White…this is my fault. How am I supposed to…ungh! Oh, Christ. His family…"_

_"Shhh. Calm down. Calm down. Everything is going to be okay. You don't have to come inside with us, Jesse. Let us handle the bike and the…and well, the rest of it."_

The goddamned train job. He tried to shake off the memories and stay chill. Another tear pushed through his lashes, and Jesse wished for the millionth time he could stop screwing up.

It seemed like no matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried to be smart like Mr. White, he still couldn't keep bad shit from happening. And how exactly was he supposed to get through all the bad shit without a little help from the blue? He couldn't go to Andrea anymore.

_The blue. I wish it wasn't the only thing I'm good at. What if it is the only thing I will ever have?_

The headlights of a passing car made him squint. Stupid asshole, using his high beams in the city. The rusty old Camaro with a collision rippled door stopped in front of the street light, and the dealer tossed aside his smoke and scuttled over to the rolled down window.

Damn it. He still could not stop fucking twitching.

Jesse clenched his jaw and burrowed deeper into his car seat, eyes skirting towards the neon sign on top of the pawn shop, at the dog eating garbage in the alley, anything but the scene on the corner, please. He felt his cell phone jut against his side from inside his jacket pocket.

He inhaled, trying to keep his breathing slow and steady. He rubbed his face on his sleeve again and willed himself to stop spazzing out. His fingers shook as he reached into his pocket and slid out his cell phone. He turned it over in his hands a few times. Almost put it back in his pocket. With a sigh, he finally flipped it open to check the time.

1:37 AM.

_"Listen up, Pinkman. I am not your sponsor. I don't do interventions or pay any mind to that serenity prayer crap. But if you ever feel like you need a cup of joe or a slice of pie, you call me. Day or night."_

He closed the phone, scrunched his eyes shut and leaned his face against it, feeling the cool metal casing against his brow.

Jesse looked back when the music from the Camaro started up again, the loud bass thumping as it moved down the block. The dealer waited there under the streetlamp in his bright yellow hoodie, watching Jesse with a forced nonchalance.

Jesse ignored the dealer's gaze and flipped open his phone, dialing the number from memory.

After four rings that felt like four years, a grizzled voice finally answered. "Yeah?"

"Yo…Mike? Y'think you could, uh, meet me at Loyola's? I mean…if you're like, not doing anything else." Jesse grimaced as soon as the words left his mouth and he rapped his wrist lightly against his temple. "Sorry. I know it's late and today was a majorly shitty day. I just could really, and I mean really use a cup of coffee right now."

On the corner, the dealer stepped away from the streetlamp, an all too familiar swagger in his gait.

_Never again never again never never never…_

"All right," Mike said, letting out that deflated sound old dudes make when they gotta move their ass. "I'll be there in 20 minutes, kid." Click.

Jesse revved up the Tercel and made his way to the diner in five.


	2. Chapter 2

Confident there weren't any cops on his tail, Mike pulled his car into Loyola's parking lot, right next to Jesse's little ragtag beater.

The kid sounded pretty ragged on the phone, and Mike hoped he hadn't done anything rash that required fixing. Jesse definitely had a fire in his belly when it came to the little ones, and it could make him unpredictable. Mike had ordered Todd to stay away from Vamonos for at least a week to give Jesse time to cool down, just in case.

_Judas priest. What a day. But if the kid snapped and I have to round up one of those big barrels for Todd, I will not shed a tear._

As he strolled up to the entrance of the diner, Mike remembered hearing the shot ring out in the desert. When he'd arrived at the bridge, Walt had to restrain Jesse, who was struggling to get near the corpse and screaming for someone to call an ambulance. Todd just stood there gawking like a potato faced little putz.

_"Why's Mr. Pinkman so upset? He said no witnesses."_

_"Shut the hell up!" Mike had snapped. "Grab Kuby and get the truck over here. Move it!"_

Why on earth had he agreed to Lydia's cockamamie train heist? That woman was a black cloud of bad luck. None of this would have happened if he'd killed her when he had the chance. He should have trusted his gut that the job was never going to go smoothly, no matter what precautions they took.

When he shrugged the front door open, he felt a deep twinge from his gunshot wound. In this business, even the best laid plans had a nasty way of going sideways.

_I am getting too old for this baloney._

Jesse was already seated at a booth all the way in the back. When he saw Mike, the look on his face was like one of those caged pups in the ASPCA commercials. Mike scoped out the diner and saw that it was nearly empty except for Margie the waitress, the cook, and two haggard looking truck drivers sitting close to the cash register.

"Please tell me you didn't do anything stupid," he growled as he slid onto the leather seat across from Jesse.

"What? No. I didn't do nothin', I swear." Jesse grabbed the sugar dispenser and poured almost half the contents into his cup. His hands trembled and his eyes were sunken and red.

"Thanks for coming," Jesse mumbled sheepishly while stirring his coffee. "Like, seriously."

"I wasn't getting any beauty sleep, anyway." Mike picked up a menu from the table. "You holding up okay over there?"

Jesse could only hitch his shoulders and shake his head in lieu of an answer. His watery blue eyes darted across the window at the cars passing in the night. He looked like he'd aged five years in one day, and it struck Mike that although he hadn't known Jesse for very long, he'd already witnessed him go through more turmoil than most folks dealt with in their whole lives. There was barely a moment in their acquaintance where Jesse wasn't one of the walking wounded.

Was it a blessing or a curse that every casualty still cut Jesse to the bone? Mike wasn't sure. He'd built up so many emotional calluses that he'd forgotten how it felt to be that raw. But Mike also couldn't recall when he'd stopped thinking of the kid as Pinkman and started calling him Jesse, either. Maybe he was starting to go soft.

"Are you still clean?" Mike asked, a little more gently.

Jesse took a big swig of his coffee. "Barely," he admitted. "I…I still don't know how to get through this kind of shit." He sat up straighter in the booth when the waitress came over with a glass of ice water.

"Mike!" The waitress grinned as she set the glass in front of him. "Burning the midnight oil again, I see. What can I get you tonight?"

"Evening, Margie. I'll have a cup of decaf and the peach pie, heated. Hold the ice cream." He patted his stomach. "I'm trying to watch my girlish figure."

"You got it," she said with a giggle as she took back his menu. Mike knew Margie had two grown girls, but when she smiled, she almost looked like a young girl again herself. "I started brewing a fresh pot as soon as you walked in the door." She looked over at Jesse. "You need anything else, hon?"

"Naw, I'm good, I'm good." Jesse watched nervously as Margie headed back behind the counter. His foot thrummed on the rug under the table, knocking into Mike's shoe.

"Jesus, kid…you need to lay off the sugar and caffeine. Eat something healthy. Get some rest tonight," Mike urged before he took a drink of his water.

Jesse let out a befuddled snort and arched his eyebrow at Mike as if he had just asked him to clean his room and mow the lawn. But as they sat there in the booth sipping their drinks, Mike knew there was something else familiar in his eyes.

His son Matty would get that same hangdog look Jesse now had when he was in trouble and wanted to ask a Big Question but was afraid of the answer.

_Pop, what would you do?_

"Mike, you've been doing this work for a super long time, right?"

"I'm not exactly a dinosaur over here, but yes. A long time."

"So, how do you sleep?" Jesse asked. He kept his voice and head low and his eye out Margie and the other customers. "Like, after," he said, emphasizing the last word carefully. "You know?"

Mike ground his teeth and tilted his head. He would indulge the question, but just barely.

"I mean, how do stop seeing their faces…every time you close your eyes?" Jesse swallowed and shifted in his seat. He twisted his napkin in his lap. "How do you sleep without havin' no nightmares?"

Mike inhaled a deep, slow breath and considered.

"Well," he drawled. "Usually they had it coming, so I sleep just fine." Mike looked down at his ice water and gave it a swish; the lemon slice collided with the cubes inside the glass. "But other times? When they didn't deserve it?"

Like the boy. Mike was pretty sure his name was Drew; that was the name he had seen written in Sharpie on the inside of his helmet.

Mike shrugged his lip. "I'm not going to lie. You don't get past them. They say time heals all wounds, but that's bull. It's more like the scar tissue gets thicker and thicker. I wish I had good advice about how to make the guilt go away, but I don't. You just have to learn how to live with yourself."

He takes another sip of his water. On the other side of the booth, Jesse burrows his face behind his hands, his shoulders trembling as he tries to hide his silent, gentle sobs behind his fingers. One of the truck drivers, the one with the beer gut and soiled John Deere cap, passed by the booth on his way back from the john and gave Jesse a withering head shake that sneered "real men don't cry." Mike shot him an ice cold glare and the chastened trucker dropped the attitude and shuffled back to the register to settle his bill.

"You should count yourself lucky on the nights you can't sleep, because the alternative is worse. Trust me; you don't want to become a monster who never gives it a second thought."

Jesse slowly rubbed the streaks from his face and snuffled into his napkin. "You mean…like Todd?"

_"Well, it looks like we are going to need more acid for the next cook," Walt had said when the barrel was finally full. "I'll send Jesse to buy more in the morning."_

"Yeah." Mike harrumphed after a long pause. "Like Todd."

When Margie came by with the pie and the coffee, she couldn't help but notice the younger man's distress.

"Oh, honey. Bad night? Are you sure I can't get you anything?"

Mike cut him off before Jesse could demur. "Bring him the meatloaf with mashed potatoes." Jesse started to protest he wasn't hungry, but Mike shushed him. Margie nodded and headed back to the kitchen.

"You are going to sit there and eat something if it takes all night," Mike demanded, pointing his fork at the boy. "I'm not going anywhere until you get yourself together."

"Really?" Jesse asked.

"Oh, for Pete's sake." Mike rolled his eyes. Sometimes Jesse was like a kicked dog starved for a tiny lick of kindness. No wonder White was able to get his hooks into him. "It's not like I was going to be able to get any sleep tonight, either." Mike took a bite of his pie.

Jesse finally allowed himself the tiniest of smiles as he hunched over his coffee, but there was no humor behind it. More like resigned acceptance.

"This job really blows. Have you ever thought…" Jesse trailed off and scratched the back of his neck. One thing Mike had learned about Jesse is that he wore every hope, every wish on his sleeve. He had the complete opposite of a poker face. He looked over at the last trucker and the diner staff in the front of the shop. It was as if he were envious that their biggest troubles were working a double shift or trying to figure out how to pay for their kid's college tuition.

Not how to cover up the murder of a child.

"I mean, do you ever wish you could, like, get a normal job and not go through this crap no more?" He looked back and searched Mike's eyes.

"Or maybe retire, you know?" He held onto Mike's gaze. "For good."

Retirement. Had Mike thought about it? Only every single day since Gustavo Fring had died. Hank Schrader's widening investigation and this latest caper had only cemented his resolve to cut ties with Walter White's dangerous enterprise once and for all. It was time.

Mike sighed.

"Well. If you're serious about quitting the business, I may have an opportunity that can help us both. But your old partner, I don't think he's going to like it."

Jesse shook his head slowly, looking down at his coffee cup while rubbing his thumb along a tiny chink on the rim.

"Tell me anyway."

Now it was Mike's turn to allow himself the tiniest of smiles as he took another bite of pie.

\- END -


End file.
